“There seems always to have been a ‘crisis of modern music,’ but by some insane miracle one person finds the way out. The impossibility of it gives me hope. Fast-forwarding through so many music-makers’ creative highs and lows in the company of Alex Ross’s incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone’s fire for music.” — Björk
“The Rest Is Noise reads like a sprawling, intense novel, one of utopian dreams, doom, and consolation, with the most extraordinary cast of characters from music and history alike.” — Osvaldo Golijov
I don’t know how many of you have been following Alex Ross and his incredibly informative blog about his upcoming book and everything important in the twentieth century music, but the book officially comes out today, so you can get yourself a copy and finally read it.
You can read some excerpts here and here, and, of course, you can buy the book itself here!
Table of Contents:
PART I: 1900-1933
1. THE GOLDEN AGE: Mahler, Strauss, and the Fin de Siècle
2. DOCTOR FAUST: Schoenberg, Debussy, and Atonality
3. DANCE OF THE EARTH: The Rite, the Folk, le Jazz
4. INVISIBLE MEN: American Composers from Ives to Ellington
5. APPARITION FROM THE WOODS: The Loneliness of Jean Sibelius
6. CITY OF NETS: Berlin in the Twenties
PART II: 1933-1945
7. THE ART OF FEAR: Music in Stalin’s Russia
8. MUSIC FOR ALL: Music in FDR’s America
9. DEATH FUGUE: Music in Hitler’s Germany
PART III: 1945-2000
10. ZERO HOUR: The U.S. Army and German Music, 1945-1949
11. BRAVE NEW WORLD: The Cold War and the Avant-Garde of the Fifties
12. “GRIMES! GRIMES!”: The Passion of Benjamin Britten
13. ZION PARK: Messiaen, Ligeti, and the Avant-Garde of the Sixties
14. BEETHOVEN WAS WRONG: Bebop, Rock, and the Minimalists
15. SUNKEN CATHEDRALS: Music at Century’s End
Perverse Egalitarianism 